Bradley Manning 'attacked female soldier and sent picture of himself as a woman'

Bradley Manning attacked a female soldier and sent his superiors a picture of
himself dressed as a woman in the weeks before he was arrested on suspicion
of handing thousands of classified files to WikiLeaks, a military court
heard.

Bradley Manning being escorted out of a courthouse Photo: AP Photo/Cliff Owen

The 24-year-old private warned that he was in emotional anguish and was involved in a number of violent incidents after being deployed to Iraq but details of his behaviour were never passed up a chaotic chain-of-command, his court martial hearing was told.

Captain Casey Fulton, who served in the same unit, said on Sunday that during one late night shift in May 2010 she found Pte Manning pinned to the ground by his female superior, Specialist Jihrleah Showman.

"[Showman] said he had struck her and she had a big red welt on her face," Captain Fulton said.

The incident came weeks after Pte Manning sent an anguished email to a sergeant, where he said his gender identity issues left him unable to work or think and even attached a photograph of himself dressed as a woman. The young soldier, who was forced by military regulations to conceal his homosexuality, sometimes referred to himself as "Breanna".

But rather than alert his superiors, Master Sergeant Paul Adkins tried to deal with the situation himself, and only told his commanders of the email after Pte Manning was arrested at the end of May 2010, the court was told.

"If Pte Manning had been removed at the time of the email the alleged assault [on Showman] would not have happened," defence lawyer David Coombs said.

Captain Steven Lim, one of the senior officers in the unit, earlier admitted that he was not told the details of two other incidents in December 2009, where Pte Manning allegedly made emotional outbursts and at one point had to be restrained because other soldiers thought he was trying to grab a weapon.

Cpt Lim told the hearing that despite specific regulations prohibiting it, soldiers would often play games and listen to music on computers that had access to the Army's secret networks, and from which Pte Manning is alleged to have stolen military and diplomatic files using blank CDs.